1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to systems, methods, and computer program products for accessing content over a network from any store, such as content in a store that is maintained separately from a file system.
2. Background and Relevant Art
As computerized systems have increased in popularity, so also have the needs to distribute files and processing resources of computer systems in networks both large and small. In general, computer systems and related devices share information over a network for a variety of reasons, whether, for example, to simply exchange personal electronic messages, to sell merchandise, provide account information, and so forth. One will appreciate, however, that as computer systems have become increasingly more sophisticated for individual use, the challenges associated with sharing data and resources on a network have also increased.
Generally, when accessing content over the web, a requesting computer sends a request message to a Web server for certain content. The request may occur as a result of selecting an Internet hyperlink for a uniform resource identifier (“URI”) through a web browser. In general, the conventional syntax for the URI request involves a host name, and a relative path to the file. The virtual path is the string of directories found in the URI after the host name has been identified. For example, in the case of a URI such as “www.host.com/dir1/dir2/file.htm”, “www.host.com” represents a resolvable domain name for the host, and the portion of the URI that is “/dir1/dir2/” represents the virtual path in the host's file system to the contents of “file.htm”.
In the simple case of the URI, the requested content (“file.htm”) may be based on content source found ultimately on the Web server's file system, such as the text of one or more Internet web pages (i.e., “file.htm” is a simple HTML web page) stored in a web directory on the file system. To provide a response to the request for content, the Web server identifies content source on the relevant directory (e.g., at “web server directory/dir1/dir2/”). The Web server may then process the content source before sending the content back to the requesting computer. In other cases, the file identified in the URI may include referrals to content source that is not necessarily found on the Web server's (or other relevant computer's) conventional file system. For example, the web form may contain a reference to remote database content source, or to some other content source that is maintained separately from the file system.
Unfortunately, it can be fairly complicated for the Web server and/or application when accessing non-file-system content source, such as, for example, in the case of database content source. Generally, the content source cannot ordinarily be accessed by simply typing in a host name and subsequent virtual path to content source outside of the file system. This problem can be particularly acute for web pages at a Web server in distributed environments, such as when using web forms that refer to non-file-system content source. For example, the Web server handling the request for such a web form may have to request the referred-to content source from the relevant application files by using one or more interfaces or scripts to query the application. The Web server could then copy the retrieved content source to the Web server's file system from a location that is maintained separately from the file system, and, in some cases, generate some source code that will be compiled. The Web server would then process the copied contents as appropriate before passing the processed content on to the requesting computer system. As such, one can appreciate that accessing non-file-system content source can be particularly difficult. Similarly, it can be complicated from a development stand point to write scripts or interface files that are used by a given Web server to access content source that is maintained separately from a file system.
Accordingly, an advantage in the art can be realized with systems, methods, and computer program products that allow developers to maintain the content of application file content source separately from the file system where appropriate, without unduly complicating retrieval requirements of such content. In particular, an advantage in the art can be realized with systems, methods, and computer program products that provide a Web server with the ability to access non-file-system content source in a manner similar in simplicity to accessing content source on a file system.